From 1841-1891 we can track down our Scottish family members in the regular decennial censuses using TheGenealogist’s website. Prior to this there are many other irregular listings of people held within a variety of genealogical sources, though they are not necessarily so easily accessible online. Before considering these, however, it is first worth pointing out that the modern decennial census actually started in 1801, not 1841. From 1801 to 1831, local enumerators were merely required to provide statistics on their local populations, but in some cases full listings have survived, identifying the families by name, and from which the statistics were then subsequently drawn.

A good example exists for the 1821 census for the Orkney islands of South Ronaldsay, Burray, Swona and the Pentland Skerries, which can be found online at www.southronaldsay.net. As many enumerators were the local kirk session clerks, some of these pre-1841 census listings can also be found in surviving kirk session records held at the National Records of Scotland or in local archives (search via the SCAN catalogue). Kirk session records can also be extremely useful in providing earlier listings in the forms of communicants lists, notably in the mid-1830s, but also through records such as lists of lair holders. Most have been digitised and can be accessed at various local archives via the Scottish documents platform, though not from home. The most comprehensive guide identifying what exists for each parish can be found at Kirsty Wilkinson’s website .

A resource that can be accessed from home is the National Library of Scotland’s digitised Post Office Directories collection. This contains over 700 directories from across Scotland covering the period from 1773-1911, although they are predominantly for the main cities, larger towns and burghs. The earliest directory from 1773 is for Glasgow, but it should be noted that in the earlier directories the listings tend to focus on the wealthier in society, as well as the merchants and tradesmen in the burghs, and only name the heads of the households concerned.

Numerous directories for Scotland can also be found at the subscription site www.TheGenealogist.co.uk – there are three from the late 18th century, covering Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In fact, many pre-1841 census listings tends to focus on the property-holding classes, whether as estate owners, or their vassals further down the feudal chain, such as feuars and large farm owners holding properties for lengthy leases. A useful platform offering a range of records for landowners is the ScotlandsPlaces website, which carries various digitised and transcribed tax records from the late 1700s, such as Carriage Tax (1785-1798), Female Servant Tax (1785-1792), Land Tax (1645-1831) and Inhabited House Tax (1778-1798). Some of the records on the site do include listings for the wider population, such as the Poll Tax (1694-1698), while records such as Farm Horse Tax (1797-1798) cover many farmers, merchants and tradesmen who owned horses and mules, necessary for their work. Again, the National Records of Scotland has many other tax and cess records available on site, as do local archives.

Before the Industrial Revolution, most people in the country lived in rural communities as tenants on the vast estates held by these landowners. As such, estate records are some of the most important genealogical records to consult prior to the 19th century. Listings of these tenants were drawn up for a whole variety of reasons, for the management of the land itself and the income that could be drawn from the tenants on it, for military purposes, and even for the administration of the estates upon forfeiture after various rebellions.

Perhaps the most commonly used resources that can place families in fermtouns, parishes, baronies and other holdings are rental records. These list those at the bottom to middle end of the land management chain, the agricultural tenants and farmers who worked plots of land from the estate owners, either as feuars or tenants, and note the crop values and payments to be made to their superiors on an annual or twice annual basis, usually at the term days of Whitsunday and Martinmas. In later records, such payments will be noted in cash only, but earlier records will likely note a mixture of cash payments and payments in kind (such as part of the crop, or a number of hens, or coals etc). Again, the documents will usually note the head of the household only, although there are exceptions, for example a widow’s name may be qualified with the name of the deceased husband to whom she was previously married. Not all records have survived – on some estates you may find surviving lists almost on an annual basis, in others once in a generation, while for some estates they may not have survived at all. As well as payment lists, you may also find lists of those in arrears, or those applying for new tacks (leases) drawn up at regular intervals.

For military purposes you may occasionally find lists in estate records which have been drawn up to provide the names of those eligible to serve in militias or in regiments to be led by the landholder. To give a good example, in a set of papers called Breadalbane’s Muniments (GD112), held at the NRS, there are many listings of folk from the 1790s in the lands beside Loch Tay, owned by the Earl of Breadalbane, as part of a recruitment drive for his militia regiment, Breadalbane’s Fencibles. For the Crerar family in Glenquaich in 1793, we learn that at the farm of Linemore a crofter called Peter Crerar was eligible for service, as was his son John; in Caolvaloch, John Crerar, son to Widow Crerar, was eligible for service, while at the croft of Easter Ledcroick, Peter Crerar and his son James were also available.

Another example of useful estate listings comes from the estates which were forfeited to the Crown after the 18th century Jacobite rebellions and earlier difficulties under Stuart rule from the Civil War up to the union in 1707. As part of the administration of these lands, rental rolls were drawn up which provide an exceptional amount of detail, including the names of the heads of households, the numbers of males and females under 10 years of age in each household, the number between 10 and 17, and those above 17, as well as the amount of livestock and the size of the agricultural holdings and crops grown. The records are found within the Exchequer Records held at the NRS, with a useful guide detailing them.

In the print edition
Read Chris’s article about free websites for researching Scottish roots in Issue 4 of Discover Your Ancestors, available to buy at discoveryourancestors.co.uk